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The city’s Investigations Department, appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio to analyze the NYPD’s response to Floyd’s protests in late May and much of June, released its 115-page report on Friday.
And while the report acknowledges that the emotions among the protesters were high and turned into abuse and violence against the police, the report also states that the NYPD agents engaged in unprofessional or excessive actions.
“The department itself made a number of key errors or omissions which likely increased the tensions and certainly contributed to both the perception and the reality that the department was suppressing rather than facilitating lawful assembly and expression of the First Amendment, ”DOI Commissioner Margaret Garnett said in the report.
The report listed 20 recommendations, including the creation of a protest response unit and a protests patrol guide policy, which NYPD commissioner Dermot Shea said he would include.
The report called on NYPD officers in riot gear to step down and use them only when needed, additional training and policies, daily messages on protesters’ constitutional rights and a greater role for protesters. community affairs officers and the office as a whole.
“Overall, the report captured the difficult time that unfolded in May / June 2020 and presents 20 logical and thoughtful recommendations that I intend to incorporate into our future policy and training,” Shea said. in a press release.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said he fully supports the findings and recommendations of the report and that the accountability “starts with me and the commissioner”.
“We needed a goal … look at what happened in May and June,” the mayor said. “We had to understand what worked well, what went wrong, what needs to be different, what needs to be better. I certainly take full responsibility for the issues raised in the report and the changes we need to make. “
The Legal Aid Society and the New York Civil Liberties Union issued a joint statement saying that the report “confirms that the shocking violence employed by the NYPD during the George Floyd protests was directly attributable to the leadership failures of Mayor de Blasio, the Commissioner Police Shea and other police leaders who have created a de facto policy allowing and encouraging officers to target protesters for brutal treatment and unlawful arrests. “
New York City Police Benevolent Association President Patrick J. Lynch said the report “confirms what the police knew on the first night of rioting: Our city leaders sent us without a plan, without a strategy. and without support to deal with a disturbance that was fundamentally different from any of the thousands of protests that police officers successfully protect each year. “
Lynch noted that more than 400 officers were injured, “hit with bricks, bottles, fire extinguishers and folding chairs.”
NYPD did not use an appropriate strategy
DOI conducted its investigation into the protests from May 28 to June 20.
The report notes that the NYPD made a total of 2,047 arrests from May 28 to June 5.
Of those arrests, 166 were felonies, 1,002 misdemeanors and 851 arrests for violation, according to the report.
In addition, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, one of the NYPD’s oversight bodies, received 1,646 protest-related allegations related to 248 incidents that occurred between May 28 and June 20, according to the report. Many of those complaints were allegations of force, which numbered 1,052, according to the report. The rest was abuse of power, 368, lack of courtesy, 185, and offensive language, 41.
The NYPD failed to implement an appropriate strategy to deal with the protests, first by not deploying enough officers and later using “disorder control tactics” which led to confrontations instead of ‘a de-escalation, the report says.
NYPD’s use of intelligence, lack of training, lack of a centralized community affairs strategy, and lack of a data collection system to track protest data all contributed to problems during the response to protests, according to the report.
‘Strong civilian oversight’ is needed
The report also makes suggestions for oversight, including merging all of the NYPD’s watch groups into one agency with an independent board and a senior member of the department responsible for issuing the documents.
“While NYPD executives may believe in good faith that they can monitor themselves effectively, we urge them to accept that at this time, their own efforts are not enough to restore and maintain trust with the public, and to seek a true partnership with strong civilian oversight, ”Garnett wrote.
During a press briefing on Friday, Garnett was asked about her talks with NYPD executives, especially those who said the department had done what they could and that there was nothing they would have changed in response, other than the staffing levels at the start.
“It’s a pretty wide gap between, I think, the general public’s perception among New Yorkers about how the department’s response went,” Garnet said.
“I don’t know what to make of that,” Garnett added later. “I hope the department is more self-critical and reflective.”
The mayor said police chiefs are trying to make good decisions under difficult circumstances.
“We will certainly be looking at the actions of individual commanders down to the constituency level, but I think it’s fair to say that what’s being emphasized here is not so much time for retribution, honestly, but time. for change, “said Blasio.
The mayor said replacing leadership was not out of the question, but rather it was about embracing change.
“I think everyone was trying to make sense. I think everyone could have done better,” de Blasio said. “It’s not, for me, about ‘should we fire someone’. That’s about, we all have to learn from it, we all have to embrace the changes. If there is someone in the leadership of the NYPD who doesn’t accept these changes, then they shouldn’t be in charge. “
CNN’s Kristina Sgueglia contributed to this report.
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